Fi­nan­cial cen­ter fine-tunes busi­ness cli­mate

Shang­hai will strive to of­fer a bet­ter busi­ness and mar­ket en­vi­ron­ment to help multi­na­tional cor­po­ra­tions achieve greater de­vel­op­ment, which is the main tar­get of the up­com­ing China In­ter­na­tional Im­port Expo and the 100 mea­sures the city adopted this year to ex­pand its scope of open­ing-up, said Shang­hai Mayor Ying Yong.

In his key­note speech on Sun­day at the 30th In­ter­na­tional Busi­ness Lead­ers’ Ad­vi­sory Coun­cil, Ying stressed that open­ing-up is a fun­da­men­tal pol­icy of China and is Shang­hai’s great­est strength.

In the past 30 years, the ad­vi­sory coun­cil, “an out­come of Shang­hai’s open­ing-up, has been the par­tic­i­pant and wit­ness of the city’s open­ing-up,” Ying said.

Mark Wein­berger, global chair­man and CEO of EY and ad­vi­sory coun­cil chair­man, said Shang­hai, as China’s largest eco­nomic hub, has played a vi­tal role in that open­ing-up and has it­self been on a jour­ney of re­mark­able trans­for­ma­tion.

“From es­tab­lish­ing the Pudong New Area to pi­o­neer­ing China’s first Pi­lot Free Trade Zone to be­ing the first Chi­nese city to break through the 3 tril­lion yuan ($432.1 bil­lion) bar­rier for GDP last year, Shang­hai is a city of firsts. A city re­cep­tive to new ideas and bold enough to seize upon them,” Wein­berger said.

Ying said Shang­hai’s achieve­ments have come through open­ing-up, and the city will open up more for fur­ther de­vel­op­ment, which is “key for Shang­hai in reach­ing its de­vel­op­ment goals”.

He said Shang­hai will en­ter a higher level of open­ing-up in the fi­nan­cial sec­tor and will es­tab­lish a high-qual­ity and open mod­ern in­dus­trial sys­tem, in­tel­lec­tual prop­erty pro­tec­tion, a more in­ter­na­tional im­ports plat­form and first class busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment.

Wein­berger said Shang­hai made dis­tinc­tive achieve­ments be­cause it is a city that keeps try­ing new things and many of the ad­vi­sory coun­cil’s rec­om­men­da­tions were put into prac­tice.

“Mega cities such as Shang­hai can lead the world in the 21st cen­tury in in­no­va­tion and co­op­er­a­tion. ... I hope in the fu­ture Shang­hai will be just as wel­com­ing to vis­i­tors and ideas from around the world,” said Yu­val Noah Harari, the best­selling au­thor of Sapi­ens: A Brief His­tory of Hu­mankind, Homo Deus: A Brief His­tory of To­mor­row, and 21 Lessons for the 21st Cen­tury.

The In­ter­na­tional Busi­ness Lead­ers’ Ad­vi­sory Coun­cil meets an­nu­ally in Shang­hai to col­lect ad­vice for the city’s mayor from top multi­na­tional cor­po­ra­tions’ ex­ec­u­tives to aid bet­ter de­vel­op­ment of the city. The first meet­ing was in 1989 by the then Shang­hai mayor Zhu Rongji, who served as pre­mier from 1998 to 2003.

This year’s ad­vi­sory coun­cil meet­ing is spe­cial as it is the 30th since the coun­cil was first con­vened in 1989, and 2018 also marks the 40th an­niver­sary of China’s re­form and open­ing-up.

“Like all sig­nif­i­cant an­niver­saries, we spend time, both cel­e­brat­ing the past and the fan­tas­tic progress Shang­hai has made as a world city, and look­ing to the fu­ture — help­ing to lay the foun­da­tions for achieve­ments yet to come,” Wein­berger said.